First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

In this paper I show that Aristotle’s widely criticised exclusion of Platonic efficient causes at Metaph. A 6.988a7–17 is defensible as an interpretation of Plato, and that alternative accounts are unpersuasive. I argue that Aristotle is only interested in – what he supposes to be – Plato’s first principles and that the usual candidates that are brought forward in scholarship as possible first principles and efficient causes (e.g. from the Timaeus and the Philebus) all fall short in crucial respects according (...) to Aristotle. This reading has the dual benefit of illuminating Aristotle’s strategy in book A and of letting him appear as a more trustworthy doxographer of his predecessors’ views. (shrink)

In this paper I show that Aristotle’s widely criticised exclusion of Platonic efficient causes at Metaph. A 6.988a7–17 is defensible as an interpretation of Plato, and that alternative accounts are unpersuasive. I argue that Aristotle is only interested in – what he supposes to be – Plato’s first principles and that the usual candidates that are brought forward in scholarship as possible first principles and efficient causes (e.g. from the Timaeus and the Philebus) all fall short in crucial respects according (...) to Aristotle. This reading has the dual benefit of illuminating Aristotle’s strategy in book A and of letting him appear as a more trustworthy doxographer of his predecessors’ views. (shrink)

Excerpt from The Appeal to Immediate Experience: Philosophic Method in Bradley Whitehead and Dewey The insight and guidance of Professor John Herman Randall, Jr. have made this book possible. Rather than merely acknowledge my debt to him I would like to express my gratitude here for his unfailing kindness, his penetrating criticism of my efforts, and the help he has given me in clarifying the complex problems of this subject-matter. I wish also to acknowledge the kindness of the following publishers (...) in permitting me to quote from their publications: F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, by Allen and Unwin Ltd.; J. H. Randall, Jr. and J. Buchler, Philosophy: An Introduction, by Barnes Noble, Inc.; F. H. Bradley, Appearance and Reality and Essays on Truth and Reality, by Clarendon Press, Oxford; F. J. E. Woodbridge, Nature and Mind, by Columbia University Press; R. W. Church, Bradley's Dialectic, by Cornell University Press; John Dewey, The Man and His Philosophy, by Harvard University Press; J. Dewey, Logic and Influence of Darwin on Philosophy, by Henry Holt Company; R. Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic, by R. Kagey; J. Dewey, Nature in Experience and Whitehead's Philosophy, by Longmans, Green & Co.; A. N. Whitehead, Symbolism, Modes of Thought, Adventures of Ideas, Process and Reality, T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy, and J. H. Muirhead, Bradley's Place in Philosophy, by the Macmillan Company; A. N. Whitehead, The Concept of Nature-and An Equiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge, by the Macmillan Company and the Cambridge University Press; H. B. Haldane, Human Experience, by John Murray Ltd.; J. Goheen, Whitehead's Theory of Value, by Northwestern University Press; J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, by Open Court Publishing Co.; G. Santayana, Realm of Essence and Scepticism and Animal Faith, by Charles Scribner's Sons; and J. Dewey, "How is Mind to be Known?" The Objectivism-Subjectivism of Modern Philosophy," M. Gross, The Philosophy of A. N. Whitehead," and M. C. Otto, The Journal of Philosophy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. (shrink)

       As is appropriate for an introductory text, Douglas Burnham’s book opens with a chapter providing general background information on Kant, a systematic overview of the whole Critical philosophy, a sketch of the basic issues dealt with in the third Critique, and an explanation of the overall structure of Kant’s book. Here and throughout Burnham’s book each section ends with a helpful summary, with diagrams and other convenient “lists†being supplied along the way for (...) added clarity. For the most part, these summaries are reliable. The author’s interpretations, however, occasionally suffer from some rather unfortunate mistakes. For example, when contrasting the categories with the principles (p.14), Burnham cites the principle of non-contradiction as the primary example; yet Kant’s expressed reason for mentioning this “principle†in A150- 3/B189-93 is to contrast it with the principles that function as applications of the categories. Likewise, while Burnham’s catalogue of the four “parts of sensibility†(pp.13-14), composed by grouping imagination (reproductive and productive) together with sensation and pure intuition, makes for an intriguing interpretation, especially as applied to the third Critique, he does not inform his (unknowing) student reader that the position he presents is far from being expressed so unambiguously in Kant’s text.        The main content of Burnham’s book is divided into five chapters that follow a more or less predictable – though sometimes rather idiosyncratic – order. Chapter 1 explains three of the four “moments†of beauty, but does so in a manner that wholly neglects Kant’s own understanding of their architectonic unity. Burnham discusses the second moment (universality) first, the first moment (disinterestedness) second, and the fourth moment (necessity) third! Moreover, he then devotes the entirety of Chapter 2 to a discussion of the third moment (purposiveness).. (shrink)

In Computers Ltd, David Harel, best-selling author of Algorithmics, explains and illustrates one of the most fundamental, yet under-exposed facets of computers - their inherent limitations. Looking at the bad news that is proven, lasting, and robust, discussing limitations that no amounts of hardware, software, talents, or resources can overcome, the book presents a disturbing and provocative view of computing at the start of the 21st century.

Source [1] Andrew E. P. Mitchell, Federica Galli, Sondra Butterworth. (2023). Editorial: Equality, diversity and inclusive research for diverse rare disease communities. Front. Psychol., vol. 14. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1285774. "It is also important to recognize that certain mental health disorders are classified as rare conditions and have their own cultural concepts of distress, as defined in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)" and require “equal attention and support for individuals and their families, both physically and emotionally”. [1].

Nicholas Jardine offers here an edition and the first translation into English of Johannes Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus. He accompanies this with essays on the provenance of the treatise - the circumstances which provoked Kepler to write it, an analysis of its strategy, style and historical sources and of the contents of Ursus' Treatise on Astronomical Hypotheses to which Kepler was replying. Dr Jardine also provides three extended interpretive essays on the intrinsic interest and historical (...) significance of the work. (shrink)

This review discussion examines two recent works on Gandhi, Richard Sorabji’s Gandhi and the Stoics: Modern Experiments on Ancient Values, and Ram Guha’s Gandhi Before India. The review makes the point that we can see Gandhi’s unusual philosophical method at work if the two books are read together. Sorabji has argued that it is essential to understand Gandhi’s philosophy before we can assess the consistency between what he thought, believed and did. Guha has recorded events in Gandhi’s early years (...) that can provide readers with details of Gandhi’s practise and experiments. (shrink)

Since Mendeleev’s discovery in 1869, the periodic table has figured as the ultimate paper tool in chemical research. It has proved to be a vital research instrument in the arsenal of the chemical community. No chemistry textbook, lecture theatre or scientific laboratory is complete without a copy of the periodic table of the elements. -/- This however, should not necessarily imply that the periodic table has never had to contend with problems. In this thesis, the history of the accommodation of (...) the rare-earth elements in the periodic table will be addressed. When Mendeleev published his periodic table in 1869, the rare earths already constituted a major obstacle. Mendeleev was able to include only four members of the rare earths and he experienced great difficulties in positioning these elements. Question marks and wrong atomic weights reigned in the last rows of Mendeleev’s system. -/- This problematic accommodation quickly grew into one of the most serious threats for the periodic law. For over fifty years, chemists continually struggled with the placement of these maddeningly similar elements. As a consequence, a lot of chemists started to question the validity of the periodic law, but others took it as a sign that the concept of a chemical element had to be reconsidered. As a result, this work intends to retrace the mutual influence of the philosophical ideas about the nature of chemical elements and the development of the periodic table from its inception in 1869 to the discovery of Moseley’s law in 1913 and Bohr’s publication of his landmark paper On the Constitution of Atoms and Molecules. -/- The aim of this thesis is to show how, on the one hand, the periodic table (as a research instrument) helped in reformulating the contemporary ideas about chemical elements, and how it aided in developing a new research program in order to resolve the rare earth crisis. On the other hand, the question will be taken up to what extent Crookes’ evolutionary ideas about meta elements helped in saving the periodic table from a severe downfall by solving the gnawing problem of the rare-earth elements. In particular, this work will also focus on the investigations of the Czech chemist, Bohuslav Brauner. It will be shown how Brauner, under the influence of Crookes’ ideas, was led to his formulation of the Asteroid Hypothesis, according to which all the rare-earth elements should be placed in a single case of the periodic table. (shrink)